The progressive farmer. [volume] (Winston, N.C.) 1886-1904, 1887-09-29

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Despondent, at the close of a weary
day, he cast himself upon a sleepless
couch and anxiously sought if haply
he might discover some means to
tighten the burden that was crushing
out his very life. He bethought him
of the BARRIERS art, deeming it better
suited to his delicate constitution. In
the latter vocation he finds neither
genial employment nor a satisfactory
livelihood. He returns to the distaf
and the spindle. And while the
stronger brother spins the snowy
fleece without thought, and spends
the product of his spindle with even
less thought, the younger brother
nervously plies his inventive genius,
through many a toiling day and anx-
ious night, till one happy June norm
ing, a hundred and twenty years ago,
the sun, arousing himself from his
cool and limpid couch, upon the
bosom of the North Sea, comes up
over fog-beclouded old England, and
darts a glad ray through the crevices
of a broken window, into the dingy
room of a living hero-the midnight
lamp still burning at his side. A
smile, like a laurel wreath, rests upon
the pallid countenance of a great con
queror.
Richard Arkwr1ght, for that was
the younger brothers name, had won
a victory grander and fer more reach
ing in it's benefcent consequences
upon the race than any that yer
perched upon the banners of a Wal
lace, a Wellington or a Washington.
In the stiffness of that early morning
he had won a triumph that has eman-
cipated the toiling millions from a
lifelong slavery to the demands for
clothing. He had completed, in con-
cept and in plan, a machine that would
do the work of a hundred and thirty
men, and in having done SO he has
blessed universal mankind, and placed
an admiring world in grateful homage
at his feet. And yet the improvident
descendants Of the improvident
stronger brother are termed "poor
laborers," whilst the frugal, the Geo.
nomical, the society conserving, the
State building descendants of the
weaker brother are styled "heartless
capitalists" and enemies of the race :!
Such characterizing is as hurtful
as it is unjust. The teacher of such
heresy is the real enemy of society.
The doctrine that the accumulations
Of the father may Of right pass to the
son, in perpetuity, whether such &C
cumulations be money, or stocks, or
lands, is one that has received the
sanction of the wisest and best men of
all ages and countries, the coarse
rawlings of a Herr Most, or the subtitle
theories of a George or a McGlynn to
the contrary Notwithstanding. Capital
and labor are. ultimately and indissolu-
bly, associated. And the highest in
terest and chiefest good to both re-
quires a policy of mutual forbearance
and concession.
The frugal, industrious and intelli-
gent laborer of yesterday is the sue
cessful capitalist of today. The idle
and dissolute capitalist of today may
be the thriftless laborer of tomorrow.
The poorest man that warns his coffee
in a kettle that he has bought and
paid for, is a capitalist to hat extent.
The richest man that draws a pen or
moves q pencil, in business, is a laborer
to that extent.
Jay Gould is said to be a capitalist,
and yeti say it, not alphabetically,
but because it is the simple truth-no
man in Odells factory works half as
hard as Jay Gould.
W. II. Vanderbilt was a capitalist,
and yet he killed himself at work, go
ing to the grave twenty years sooner
than he might have gone, had he been
a common day laborer.
So intricately interdependent are
capital and labor-so overlapping and
interlacing are they in their relations
THAT the finest metaphysician may
not, in the upward scale, define the
point or line where labor and the
laborer leases to be, and becomes cap
ital and capitalist or, in the down
ward scale, define the line where cap
ital and capitalist ceases to be, and be-
comes labor and laborer.
So closely allied, and SO dependent
the n upon the other, are these
powerful agents Of society, that a love
like that of Jonathan for David, and
a friendship like that Of Damon for
Pythias, ought to characterize their
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